Live video of April the Giraffe abruptly ends before expected birth

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UPDATE: It appears the live video of April the giraffe is back up. Watch here.

HARPURSVILLE, N.Y. — What is going on with Animal Adventure Park’s livestream of April the pregnant giraffe? Millions of people have been tuning in to watch the giraffe give birth. The feed suddenly went offline at around 5am Saturday. Viewers are inundating the Zoo with emails about the giraffe’s condition.

Animal Adventure Park posted this update to Facebook: “Good morning! There is an internet outage on our end at this time. Our team Is in the giraffe barn trying to establish connection. Nothing wrong with April and baby and no this is not the hoax many anticipated.”

They cleared things up with a second update: “This is not a hoax! The fact the cam went down this morning didn’t help our cause by any means; but we are back up! We have received some lovely snow overnight and this morning, which may have contribute to our signal issues.”

Zookeepers in New York are keeping a close eye on April. The pregnant giraffe was expected to give birth Friday.

The feed returned to YouTube at around 8am Saturday morning. It still is not clear what caused the outage that lasted for about three hours.

This video shows the end of the live video feed posted Friday:

Animal Adventure Park began streaming on Feb. 23 on YouTube showing April preparing to give birth, drawing worldwide attraction. The video was initially removed after animal rights activists flagged the videos as “sexually explicit” before being restored.

The 15-year-old is expecting her 4th calf. Giraffes are pregnant for 15 months. An exact date and time of when April will be giving birth is still not known.

Once the baby giraffe is expected to be 150 lbs and 6′ tall at birth. The front hooves will come out first followed by the snout. Mom will naturally raise the calf, with weaning could take between 6-10 months, maybe longer.

Here are the signs that I’m happy to be seeing: significant changes to her “back end” including vulvar swelling, laxity and a thick, gooey discharge. Mammary development including milk let-down and some occasional dripping. Her behavior has changed drastically from yesterday to today. She is less engaging, hesitant to eat her feed (and treats) and unresponsive to a lot of various stimuli. You will also see her do a few things including standing and staring off into space as well as stretching her neck and back legs. If you watch carefully you will see her abdominal wall tense up during those episodes. You’ll also see a lot more squinting and just odd behavior. Also important to note is the amount and size of her fecal output. Everything she is doing is surely pointing to her going into labor soon. – Not much has changed from the morning but I suspect she will go quickly.
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It looks like we will have an April Fools baby!
Who could have ever predicted this, unfolding as it has. The perfect ending. April – waited for April!”